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Nature videos help to calm inmates in solitary confinement

Posted on September 6, 2017 Categories: NewsComments are off for this post

September 1, 2017

Gabriel Popkin of Nature News describes a new study where prisoners in solitary confinement were split into two groups, one of which allowed these prisoners the opportunity to view 45-minute long nature videos up to five times per week for several months. There were numerous benefits in this group, notably a 26% reduction in disciplinary reports for violent behavior. However, the control group was not matched with non-nature videos and thus Professor Berman comments in the Nature News article that this study does not allow for clear conclusions. Additionally, there is an ethical concern that this study’s noted benefits of nature videos in this extremely deprived condition may justify the continuation of solitary confinement. To read the Nature News article, click here, and to read the scientific article, click on this link: “Impacts of nature imagery on people in severely nature-deprived environments” (Nadkarni et al., 2017).